Resources

Of all the places I have served in a rabbinic capacity, the maximum-security prison where I serve now is the most religious.

I can imagine a situation where Noah’s gut instinct was to just follow God, but I cannot fathom how he just sat there as the rain started to fall and didn’t do anything to try to save anyone. 

As the world has moved on, and as precautions have dropped, high-risk disabled folks are increasingly feeling an existential isolation, not just a physical one.

The work of pursuing justice, healing this world, feels at moments like a desert without a clear destination. The journey is hard and long, but when in the desert, when in the midst of suffering, when in despair, we are commanded not to lose hope.

In our tradition, from any place on earth, even in a prison cell, there is always the possibility of teshuvah — a return.

Five chaverim share thoughts on a social-justice-themed sermon they might give in the upcoming High Holiday season. We hope that their insights will move your intellectual gears as you prepare to deliver sacred messages to your community.  Each chaver will share a topic, the text they are basing their sermon around, and the takeaway they...

...the Torah instructs that in the midst of our holiest cities and amongst people who do the work of God, that precisely there — in that place — are the vulnerable to take refuge.

I would like to see us reclaim what women’s rights can mean – and note that our tradition supports our demand to be seen as fully human, however we identify.

Balaam models being an independent and critical thinker... He refuses to stoke the hot coals of fear that demonize the other.  

Nowhere do we see God and the people in a real process of engagement with their history and what is broken in their relationship. With so much left unsaid and unresolved, we should not be surprised to see the same issues in their relationship emerging again and again.